Diaghilev ─ A Life

"Sjeng Scheijen's Diaghilev: A Life is the first biography to do justice to one of the twentieth century's most remarkable personalities. Russian by birth, cosmopolitan by temperament and founder of the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev left a deep mark on all the arts of his era.

He commissioned Stravinsky's first ballet scores, as well as music from Debussy, Ravel and Prokofiev. Picasso and Matisse designed sets and costumes for him. He elicited masterworks from Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska and Balanchine that changed the face of ballet. He was a gay man who did not hide his sexuality and made men equal partners of women. By turns passionate and indefatigable, he was an impresario of genius, a man of the fin de siecle who welcomed the revolution of cubism, a barin who sympathized with the Revolution, even as he helped young Russian emigres forge an artistic identity in the West. Drawing on a myriad of new Russian sources, many locked away for decades, Scheijen presents Diaghilev as a man devoted to beauty in all its manifestations and a cosmopolitan who carried Russia in his heart until his death in 1929 in Venice."---Lynn Garafola, dance critic, historian, and curator

"Drawing on a great deal of new research, and relying wherever possible on contemporary journals and letters, Scheijen puts Diaghilev into a different frame to any of his previous biographers... Scheijen masterfully recounts the phenomental way in which Diaghilev contrived, under virtually impossible circumstance, to nurture a sequence of works, from Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Milhaud, designed by Bakst, Picasso, Derain, Matisse, Miro, danced by Nijinsky, Karsavina, Massine, Lifar, choreographed by Fokine, Nijinsky, Nijinska, Massine, each more audacious than the last, many of them still in the repertoire."---Simon Callow, The Guardian

"An expansive, immensely readable text...A must for anyone intrigued by the Ballets Russes and the ingenious impresario indelibly linked with its achievements."---Anne Hogan, Times Higher Education Supplement

A major new biography of Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes, who revolutionized ballet, bringing together composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, dancers and choreog-raphers such as Nijinsky and Karsavina, Fokine and Balanchine and artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Bakst and Goncharova. An accomplished, flamboyant impresario of all of the arts, he made a huge contribution to the arts of the twentieth century.

Diaghilev (1872-1929) is a character on the scale of myth. Growing up in a minor noble family in remote Perm, as a very young man he became an influential writer on art and a publisher in St. Petersburg. Moving soon onto a bigger stage, he became a central figure in the artistic worlds of Paris, London, Rome, Berlin and Madrid during the golden age of modern art. He lived through bankruptcy, war, revolution and exile. Furthermore he lived openly as a homosexual and his liaisons, most famously with Nijinsky, and his turbulent friendships with, among others, Stravinsky, Coco Chanel, Misia Sert, Prokofiev and Jean Cocteau give his life an exceptionally dramatic quality.

Scheijen's magnificent biography, based on extensive research in little-known archives, especially in Russia, is revelatory and brings a complex and powerful personality with boundless creative energy fully to life. The illustrations deliver a portrait gallery of many of Diaghilev's friends and offer a small taste of the art he inspired and commissioned.

Sjeng Scheijen is an independent scholar, a historian of Russian art and an advisor to many museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum for their major new exhibition on Diaghilev. He has most recently been cultural attache at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow. He lives in Amsterdam.